We are all about local news, events and people. As a weekly and a 24-7 website in a region that has towns not cities, we know you have an array of other sources for as much or as little national and state news as you like, and look to us to keep it local.

Occasionally, a state or national tragedy or other event is so major, we report it because we know it’s rightly on your mind, as it is ours. Our approach is to find a local perspective, like when the Boston Marathon was bombed in 2013 and we talked with people with local ties who were at the marathon or nearby; or two months later, when Edgecomb Selectman Jack Sarmanian, in Oklahoma helping tornado survivors as a Red Cross volunteer, found himself hunkered down in a hotel as a tornado moved past it.

People’s willingness to share those experiences when we reach out by phone, email or Facebook lets us report that important national news through local eyes. We are there as a paper and a website and you as our readers are there because our fellow residents, former residents or residents’ relatives were there.

We tell also the stories of our towns responding to national events through fundraisers like the hurricane relief one the Girl Scouts just did; or last week’s vigil at First Congregational Church in the wake of the Las Vegas killings.

For one crisis after another, nature or man-made, the Midcoast has reached out in moral or financial support. Those instances plus the ones where someone local was at or near the national event, make that emergency or tragedy local news, as well, and show we’re all connected, across the miles.